Month: December 2023

Armenia shot from relative obscurity to global prominence recently over tensions with neighboring Azerbaijan. But there is another reason to pay attention to this rugged, mountainous country: it’s fast evolving tech sector.

It has emerged as a tech powerhouse with the presence of global players and a vibrant startup ecosystem. And while the country remains politically close to Russia and Iran as a counterbalance to hostile neighbors on the west (Turkey) and the east (Azerbaijan), it’s private sector remains firmly fixed on the West, particularly the United States with its near million-strong Armenian diaspora.

“We consider ourselves a network nation,” said Rem Darbinyan, founder of a startup called Viral Mango, which matches brands to influencers around the world. “We have generations of Armenians living overseas.”

In October, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was in the vibrant capital Yereven to speak at the country’s Silicon Mountains conference and open a new Adobe building. Across town, dozens of startups displayed their innovations at the annual Digitec expo. Already, the small, landlocked country has produced one unicorn (Picsart) with more on the way.

With the snowcapped summit of distant Mount Ararat – the Armenian national symbol that rises across the border in Turkey – visible on clear days, Yerevan is filled with sophisticated restaurants crowded with tables of young tech entrepreneurs drinking apricot brandy and eating platters of stuffed grape leaves as they discuss the latest innovations.

Various indexes show Armenia as the emerging tech powerhouse of the Southern Caucasus region, a legacy of its role as one of the Soviet Union’s top technology centers – the USSR’s first general-purpose computers were developed there in the early 1960s

That history faltered during the breakup of the Union and the subsequent war with Azerbaijan to define Armenia’s national borders – a conflict that continues to reverberate today. But, Armenia recovered and has drawn on the success of its diaspora in the United States to become one of the strongest economies in the region.

People like Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of biotechnology powerhouse Moderna, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and Avie Tevanian, former CTO of Apple and creator of the macOS operating system, have all remained connected to the country.

Following its independence in 1991, Armenia began developing as a behind-the-scenes builder of software for Western companies, many founded by Armenians. But gradually, it has climbed the value chain to produce products of its own.

That trend only accelerated with the outbreak of Russia’s war with Ukraine which drove companies from both countries to relocate to Yerevan. The subsequent influx of capital drove up the Armenian dram against the dollar, hurting the competitiveness of the country’s outsource industry. Meanwhile, a small venture capital industry coalesced to fund tech development and today startups can raise as much as $1 million domestically before turning to VCs abroad.

Consequently, the country’s economy is booming – with projected 7 percent growth this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, making it the fastest growing economy in the region.

Many places in the world have developed technology hubs and startup ecosystems, but for Armenia it’s a matter of survival.

“The future of Armenian economic development in science-based, high-margin products,” the country’s minister of high-tech industry, Robert Khachatryan, told Forbes. He explained that because the country is landlocked, logistics costs mean it cannot export physical goods at competitive prices.

The tech industry is now the country’s the fastest-growing sector, expanding by more than 30 percent in 2023, surpassing resource extraction and agriculture as the primary drivers of the economy. And it is drawing foreign investment. Besides Adobe, many of the world’s most powerful technology firms have set up shop there, including Microsoft, Google, IBM and Cisco.

Artificial intelligence, of course, is the hot technology on offer. Picsart, a photo and video editing platform launched in 2011, has a team of data scientists building the company’s own generative AI foundation model. Krisp, a more recent startup, uses artificial intelligence to change the accents of Filipino and Indian English speakers in real time into plain midwestern U.S. pronunciation – a product it markets to call centers serving North America.

At the DigiTec expo, dozens of startups displayed their AI wares, from Viral Mango with a platform that matches influencers to brands, to Orders.co whose AI software, at the touch of a button, creates interactive menus for restaurants who want to integrate with food delivery services.

Armenia was late getting on the AI bandwagon but is catching up fast. While the country’s university system was strong on math, there were few machine-learning faculty available to guide students in 2016, when machine learning was already sweeping computer-science departments in the west. Hrant Khachatrian, a young researcher, and four friends rented an apartment in the capital and huddled around a single GPU to start exploring on their own.

The community and number GPUs grew into one of Armenia’s first AI labs: YerevaNN. By 2019 YerevaNN was publishing papers in top AI conferences, including Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR).

Universities began catching up, establishing graduate programs in AI. Today, Khachatrian is working with Yerevan State University to fold YerevaNN into a new AI lab being set up by the university, finally giving students there a place to conduct research.

The AI research community in Armenia has grown to over 600 people. However, a lack of compute resources threatens its competitiveness. GPUs are hard to come by and expensive when they are available.

That’s where the private sector comes in. Venture capital and Western connections among the country’s entrepreneurs are helping startups build products despite the hardware constraints.

"We now have venture funds in Armenia,” said Narek Vardanyan, CEO of Prelaunch.com, a validation platform creators can use to gauge market demand for their products before developing them. “Previously, Armenian companies had to go to Silicon Valley, for early-stage funding, we can raise $2 million to $3 million with Armenian funds."

The community is also focused on building human capital with private initiatives such as Armath (a contraction of Armenia and Math), sponsored by the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE), which runs engineering labs across Armenia for students as young as 10.

At a village school in the countryside north of Yerevan, bright-eyed middle-school students gather in a classroom to demonstrate their projects – one, a shoebox-sized ‘smart home,’ with a keypad lock, smoke detector and automated lighting cobbled together with sensors, LED lights and bits of wire. Along a windowsill, a row of potted plants are fed by a student-built automatic irrigation system. The students, meanwhile, work at monitors attached to pocket-sized Rasberry Pi computers.

“In Armath, everything is open source and it’s all project-based learning," explained Arevik Hovhannisyan, a teacher. "The goal is to have the kids understand the basics of engineering, and maybe decide to become an engineer."

Armath works as a public-private partnership – companies sponsor the labs, which are then donated to schools where local government pays for their operation. So far, UATE has established more than 650 labs across Armenia and exported the model to several other countries.

In the far north of the country, sandwiched between steep mountain slopes, students at another program gather in the evening for folk dances and to show off their projects. This is Real School, another UATE initiative, a four-year vocational program for high schoolers, giving them hands on experience building technology solutions.

Back in the capital, kids 12 to 18 can attend TUMO, an extracurricular bootcamp where they learn to program and build software. The interior feels more like a well-funded tech company than a school, with custom-designed workstations on wheels and a carpeted, amphitheater-style meeting place. “We show them that everything can be created by them on their own,” said Zara Budaghyan, a TUMO graduate herself.

Another initiative, AI Generation, hopes to embed machine-learning education in high schools across the country. Initially funded by Moderna cofounder Noubar Afeyan, AI Generation already has hundreds of students enrolled in high schools in 16 cities hoping to develop artificial intelligence researchers and engineers.

“We want to show Armenian tech ecosystem on the map of like world market,” said Sargis Karapetyan, a tech entrepreneur and UATE’s interim CEO, adding that the country needs more outside capital. “Another target are people who are looking to open branches in Armenia, to expand and find good talent.”

Craig S. Smith is a former correspondent and executive at The New York Times. He is host of the podcast Eye on A.I. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigsmith/2023/12/08/soviet-mainframes-to-silicon-mountains-armenia-as-a-tech-powerhouse/?sh=7082ce4734aa

The war that Israel is waging against the Hamas terror group gradually exposes its enemies, who until now have been sitting on the sidelines. However, as war goes on, it seems that those hostile countries are projecting poison and hatred towards Israel and the Jews.

One of those countries is Armenia, which in recent years has been involved in conflict with Azerbaijan, a country that has Israel’s support and maintains warm and staunch relations with Israel.

The story has no apparent connection to the war.

Several years ago, a 99-year lease agreement was signed for the development of a new luxury hotel in the Armenian quarter in Yerushalayim. A court hearing was recently held regarding the land and parking lot in the Yerushalayim court. The total area is approximately 11.5 dunams [1.15 hectares], which includes a parking lot.

The land was in possession of the Armenian Patriarchate and it was claimed to be a trust for the whole Armenian community. Several members of the community who were angry about this development filed a lawsuit, claiming that they would have to pay hundreds of shekels a month for parking. At the same time, according to a report by Al Jazeera, several Armenians claimed that the property offered for real estate development was allegedly stolen from them by a group of “settlers,” and that the State of Israel wants to expropriate the land in order to expel the Armenians from Yerushalayim. They even called it the State of Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of non-Jews.

If that is not enough, it seems as though there were several members of the Armenian community under pressure from the Palestinians, who began initiating incitement in the global media, echoing pro-Palestinian claims against Israel, and presenting the real estate matter as proof, alleging that Israel wants to appropriate from them and dispossess Israeli land from non-Jews, even though anyone with a little common sense and who is not rabidly antisemitic, understands that there is no connection between this transaction and the current war.

There may be a financial dispute involving the plot, but there is definitely no place to turn the story into an attempt to ethnically cleanse Israel of other nationalities, and whoever makes such a connection, as has been done in several media outlets around the world, is making unsubstantiated claims to incite antisemitism.

The background to the Armenian unrest is probably due to the close, friendly relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, and Israel’s support for the Azerbaijanis in the context of the dispute over Karabakh, which has just recently returned to Azerbaijani control. The anger in the Arab world towards what Israel is doing in Gaza also gives license to aggressively attack Israel, so that everyone can make false claims that have nothing to do with the reality.

Proof that Armenia has recently come out against Israel and the Jewish world, does not only stem from the current story, but also from reports over the past month of the two attacks on the last synagogue in Armenia, where the perpetrators openly admitted that their actions were due to Israel’s support for Azerbaijan. To cover up for their actions, they claimed that they also acted in solidarity with and support for the Palestinians and the Lebanese.

Either way, the Palestinian pressure and desire to avenge Israel has resulted in savage incitement against Israel in several international media outlets, where the ludicrous claims of stealing land and ethnic cleansing are broadcast without any denial or offering an Israeli response.

Deputy Minster of Transport and Road Safety Rabbi Uri Maklev responded by saying, “We are sorry that a property dispute and the development of Yerushalayim is being used during these difficult times for Israel and the Jewish nation as a whole, as fuel to kindle fire in Yerushalayim and, chalilah, for and struggle between countries. Unfortunately we see over and over again that the pro-Palestinians attempt to light the fire with baseless antisemitic accusations. This is a danger to Yerushalayim and gives rise to disastrous consequences for the fabric of interreligious relations. We expect the Armenian leadership to come to their senses and to protect the local Jewish community exactly as Israel allows freedom of religion for all religions across the country.”

https://hamodia.com/2023/12/07/new-battleground-for-antisemitism-in-yerushalayim-armenians-support-for-palestinians/

Azerbaijan is tipped to host next year's UN climate summit, after striking a late deal with longtime adversary Armenia over its bid.

Diplomatic sources told Reuters the Azeri bid looked set to win support from other nations, though the issue is still being negotiated at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

The decision over who will take over from current COP28 host, the United Arab Emirates, has been in an unprecedented geopolitical deadlock, after Russia said it would veto any European Union country's bid to host. The EU has sanctioned Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Azerbaijan confirmed late on Thursday it had struck a deal with Armenia that allows Baku to bid to host the COP29 talks without the threat of an Armenian veto.

The choice of a COP host needs support from all countries in the UN eastern Europe regional group.

"We received particular support from most of the countries [in the eastern European group]. Russia has also supported our bid," Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said on Friday.

A representative for Russia's delegation at COP28 declined to comment. Russia's Energy Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Armenia agreed to back Azerbaijan's COP hosting bid in exchange for membership of the eastern European group's COP bureau.

The two Caucasian countries have been in conflict for decades, most notably over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but largely populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. The region had been controlled by its ethnic Armenian majority until it was recaptured by Azerbaijan in September.

Diplomatic sources at COP28 told Reuters other eastern European countries are expected to back Baku's bid to host – even though Moldova had also made a bid and Serbia was mulling one.

Diplomats are racing to find a deal before COP28's scheduled end on 12 December.

The deadlock over the host has left next year's COP29 summit host with little time to prepare for the massive gathering – which can bring its host nation diplomatic prestige, as well as heavy scrutiny over its own record in fighting climate change.

Azerbaijan is an oil and gas producer and a member of OPEC+.

The United Arab Emirates has faced criticism for appointing Sultan al-Jaber, the head of its state-run oil company ADNOC, as president of this year's COP28 summit.

Some delegates at COP28 have raised concerns about holding the world's climate negotiations in an oil producer for a second year running.

"I do understand these concerns," Hajizada said.

"Despite the fact that Azerbaijan is rich in oil and gas, Azerbaijan's strategic goals are the diversification of energy, resources, especially applied to wind and solar energy," he said. 

(Reuters)

Arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan said Thursday they would exchange prisoners of war and work towards normalising their relations, in a joint statement hailed by the EU as a "breakthrough".

The Caucasus neighbours have been locked in a decades-long conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan reclaimed after a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists in September.

Both countries have said a peace agreement could be signed by the end of the year, but peace talks — mediated separately by the European Union, the United States and Russia — have seen little progress.

On Thursday, the two sides agreed in a joint statement to seize "a historical chance to achieve a long-awaited peace in the region".

"The two countries reconfirm their intention to normalize relations and to reach the peace treaty on the basis of respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity," the statement said.

Baku will free 32 Armenian prisoners of war, while Yerevan will release two Azerbaijani servicemen, according to the statement.

The two countries also said they "will continue their discussions regarding the implementation of more confidence building measures, effective in the near future and call on the international community to support their efforts".

The agreements were reached during talks between the office of Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the administration of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

Armenia's foreign ministry said Yerevan had "responded positively to the offer of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to organise the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington".

EU Council President Charles Michel praised the statement Thursday in a post on social media, calling it a "key step".

"Delighted to welcome a major breakthrough in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations as they issue a joint statement," he said.

Aliyev and Pashinyan have met on several occasions for normalisation talks mediated by the European Union.

But the process has stalled over the last two months as two rounds of negotiations failed to take place.

Azerbaijan refused to participate in talks with Armenia that were planned in the United States on November 20, over what it said was Washington's "biased" position.

In October, Aliyev declined to attend a round of negotiations with Pashinyan in Spain, that time accusing France of bias.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join Michel as mediators at those talks.

So far, there has been no visible progress in EU efforts to organise a fresh round of negotiations.

The traditional regional power broker Russia — bogged down in its Ukraine war — has seen its influence wane in the Caucasus. 

Aliyev sent troops to Karabakh on September 19, and after just one day of fighting, Armenian separatist forces that had controlled the disputed region for three decades laid down arms and agreed to reintegrate with Baku.

Over the following days, almost the entire Armenian population of the mountainous enclave — more than 100,000 people — fled Karabakh for Armenia, sparking a refugee crisis.

Azerbaijan's victory marked the end of the territorial dispute, which saw Azerbaijan and Armenia fight two wars — in 2020 and the 1990s — that have claimed tens of thousands of lives from both sides.

(AFP)

The petroleum-rich country received a surprise endorsement from its arch-rival Armenia.

Petrostates could be on a streak for hosting international climate talks.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan got a surprise boost Thursday in its bid to hold next year’s COP29 when Armenia, a country it has warred with on and off for decades, dropped its own aspirations to host the talks — and endorsed its adversary’s candidacy.

The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) supported the 2nd Armenia-Georgia Cross Border Cooperation workshop on veterinary practices, held in Yerevan on December 6-7, 2023. This event brought together key Armenian figures from the Ministry of Economy and Food Safety Inspection Body (FSIB), alongside their Georgian counterparts from the National Food Agency and State Laboratory of Agriculture. Building on the success of the inaugural workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2022, the event fostered collaboration and knowledge exchange.

 The workshop aimed to delve into the current veterinary programs in both countries, addressing crucial topics such as animal identification, registration, and traceability systems. Furthermore, it explored avenues for joint capacity building and experience sharing. The Georgian experts toured the Republican Veterinary-Sanitary and Phytosanitary Center of Laboratory Services of FSIB. Culminating in signing a Memorandum of Understanding, participants affirmed their commitment to enhancing cooperation in the veterinary sector between two countries. 

On December 7 evening, Armenia and Azerbaijan issued an unexpected joint statement, the first of its kind that did not bear the signature of any mediator working on the peace process between the two. 

According to the statement, Armenia and Azerbaijan "share the view that there is a historical chance to achieve a long-awaited peace in the region." 

"The two countries reconfirm their intention to normalize relations and to reach the peace treaty on the basis of respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity," it read. 

"Following the talks between the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, an agreement has been reached on taking tangible steps towards building confidence between the two countries."

The statement announced an agreement on the exchange of 32 detained Armenian military servicemen for 2 Azerbaijani servicemen, "driven by the values of humanism and as a gesture of goodwill." 

All known prisoner exchanges in the past have taken place through the efforts of mediators.

The statement also announced Armenia's support for Azerbaijan's bid to host the 29th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, by withdrawing its own candidacy. In return, Azerbaijan supports Armenia's candidacy for Eastern European Group COP Bureau membership. This also marks the first time the two countries have publicly backed each other's leadership in international bodies. 

Since the Second Karabakh War in 2020, Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks have proceeded on two separate tracks, one mediated by Russia and the other by the EU and U.S.

The peace process had been at a near-standstill, particularly since Baku's full takeover in September of Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory that had been at the heart of the dispute between the two countries for more than 30 years. 

After that, it looked like there were no more barriers to reaching a peace treaty between the two countries, with the de facto Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh initiating its own dissolution and Armenia accepting the territory as part of Azerbaijan. However, the sides still retained their disagreements, with Azerbaijan continuously snubbing peace talks over its newfound discontent with mediation by Western countries. 

In November, the Armenian foreign ministry reported that it had sent its latest proposal for a peace agreement to the Azerbaijani side. 

On December 6, speaking at a forum in Baku, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev confirmed its receipt and said his government would reply soon, but also complained of an alleged Armenian delay in communication. 

"[I]t's a document of maybe six-seven pages maximum with less than 20 articles. So for such a small document, Armenia needed 70 days to respond to us. And they responded only after the Azerbaijani foreign minister publicly disclosed that," he asserted. 

"Look, we're waiting for two months. Why don't you respond? So, this shows that the side which delays the process is not Azerbaijan, it is Armenia. Why did they delay? I don't know whether it was their own decision or they were advised by their new friends in some European capitals. I don't know, I can only suspect."

The deal was welcomed by the EU, the U.S. and Russia. 

It was regarded by observers as historic and promising. 

"Most importantly, it shows that Baku and Yerevan can deal, offering hope for further talks and, perhaps even eventually, a peace deal and normalization of relations between the two countries," Zaur Shiriyev, analyst with the International Crisis Group, wrote on X. 

Some analysts, both in Armenia and Azerbaijan, suspected that there was some behind-the-scenes mediation, particularly since the statement was released the day after U.S. Assistant State Secretary James O'Brien met Aliyev in Baku. 

Former Armenian diplomat Sossi Tatikyan speculated on X that there might have been "robust 3rd party mediation/shuttle diplomacy, but it preferred to stay backstage to save Aliyev's face." 

Baku-based political analyst Shahin Jafarli wrote on Facebook there is "no doubt that both this agreement and the decision to hold an early presidential election [in Azerbaijan] are related to the U.S. delegation's visit."

However, he still noted that the joint statement and agreed confidence-building measures are "historically significant and aimed at preparing real grounds for peace".